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' FROM 




J.J.SPEED,OF BALTIMORE, 



TO A 



LANDHOLDER OF BALTIMORE COUNTY, 



O N TH E 



SUBJECT OF DISUNION. 



BALTIMORE: 

PRINTED BY SHERWOOD & CO 

N, W. Corner Baltimore and Gay streets. 

1850. 



> N \\ 



A LETTER 



FROM 



J. J. SPEED, OF BALTIMORE, 



TO A 



LANDHOLDER OF BALTIMORE COUNTY, 



ON THE 



SUBJECT OF DISUNION. 



BALTIMORE: 
PRINTED BY SHERWOOD & CO 

N. \V. Corner Baltimore and Gay streets. 

1850. 



Baltimore, 6th July, 1850., 
My Dear Sir, — 

I have received and read your excellent letter. Its 
sentiments are most just; and if they could be gener- 
ally diffused, would command the public admiration 
and give encouragement and strength to the drooping 
patriotism of the country. For, after all, these emo- 
tions of patriotism, ennobling as they are, share but the 
lot of the other affections of the mind ; they are em- 
boldened or depressed, become strong or timid as they 
meet with encouragement or disfavor in quarters enti- 
tled to respect; and, though the love of country and 
affection for the government are sentiments of great 
warmth and gallantry in the American breast, they 
may, nevertheless, sink under discouragement and be- 
come listless and passive under the influence of such 
proceedings and debates as have recently taken place 
in the two Houses of Congress. Those debates, ex- 
tending, now, through half a calendar year — from the 
winter solstice to the vernal equinox — and so on, again, 
to the longest day of summer, have been quite too re- 
markable not to have attracted and chained your atten- 
tion. The desperate proposition of disunion has been 
put forth and discussed, with as much coolness and de- 
liberation, as if its adoption would not be positively 
fatal to the liberties of the country. And it is this cool- 
ness and complacency that should alarm us. That the 
deliberations of Congress should now be engrossed and 
controlled by measures that, at any other period of our 



history, would have been denounced as treason, in the 
obscurest assemblies of the people, is well calculated 
to excite alarm in our breasts. A government vouch- 
safed to us by Providence as a reward for the virtues 
of a generation that has gone before us, a government 
that has by its benign efficacy and vigor, in the short 
space of two-thirds of a century, conducted a young 
nation from helplessness to greatness, a government 
whose operations have been so vastly beneficial to man- 
kind, so encouraging to Christianity and to human lib- 
erty, a government that, guided by the principles of its 
great founder, has resisted the trespasses and betrayals 
of foreign diplomacy and withstood the rudest assaults 
of foreign war, is now, it appears, to be torn down by 
our own hands, or rather, by the hands of our rulers, 
who like children, in the delirium of play, seem re- 
solved to throw in the dust the things that are most 
precious to us. The emblems of our greatness, suc- 
cesses and triumphs, with the bulwarks of our security, 
are to be trampled under foot. This great confederacy 
is to be broken up and torn asunder, and two Republics 
are to be established in its place — a Northern and a 
Southern Republic, — whose natural condition would be 
war — war whose duration would be for ages and whose 
flame and havoc have not been equaled by any of the 
modern conflicts of mankind. The storming of Ismail 
and the slaughter at Saragossa may present some ex- 
ample of its desperation; and, in addition to the infor- 
mations of ancient history, we know the stained banks 
of the Tweed and the Rhine present us with some of 
the deeper foot-prints of border warfare. What do 
our rulers expect? The dismemberment of the Union 
could not change the physical geography of the coun- 
try. The great rivers would still flow on; the soils of 



the. South would still produce their staples ; cotton and 
sugar would not grow north of the Potomac, nor could 
the great fisheries of New Foundland be removed 
nearer the tropics. These would remain; not as sour- 
ces and elements of wealth for a whole people, but as 
objects of strife and contest. The looms of New 
England, the iron of Pennsylvania and the less valuable 
gold of California would remain, not to succour and 
nournish an empire, but to be fought for, in many fields, 
by a dismembered people. The public lands would 
preserve their present locations, their titles being left 
for adjustment by the issues of war. And the great 
waters of the Mississippi would still roll on, — sweeping 
through the continent — not, as now, bearing upon their 
currents the harvests of great regions to friendly mar- 
kets — but cutting through hostile States, — its commerce 
chained and entangled by tariffs and duties, its banks 
and great cities bristling with fortresses and all the dark 
equipments of war. And then, instead of the note of 
prosperity and joy that now rings through its valleys, 
expressing the gratitude and happiness of a noble peo- 
ple, the shout of war would be heard from its mouths 
to its highest sources, and the wail and lament of a na- 
tion would be poured out upon its waters. The break- 
ing up of the Union, upon sectional differences, could 
not heal those differences. Would the property in 
slaves be rendered more secure by offering them a cer- 
tain refuge in a hostile State ? Would not the warm 
questions that now agitate the country be increased in 
heat by discussions, in public assemblies, where they 
could not be opposed by reason or met by argument ? 
What is now urged in the National Legislature as com- 
plaint, would, in the Congresses of the new Republics, 
be put forward as accusation and charge — repelled by 



recrimination and the issues left to the sword. Diplo- 
macy could not adjust them. What we ourselves agree 
cannot be settled by friendly conference, could hardly be 
arranged by the colder deliberations of diplomatic 
agents. Let us consider for example, what would be 
the provision of the organic law of the Northern Re- 
public in regard to slavery. Unquestionably it would 
be the same as that of England. That the fleeing slave 
should be free as soon as he set foot on their territory, 
and the pursuit of the master would in itself be made 
felony ! And what a scene would this present along a 
thousand miles of inland frontier; and, including that 
of the ocean, a frontier greater in extent than the whole 
circumference of the British islands? And, on the 
other hand, what would become of the looms of New 
England ? What would become of her great factories 
with all their expensive equipments ? Would they not 
be stricken motionless if the cotton of the South were 
withheld from them? And would it not be withheld, 
as far as the strongest preferences and treaty discrimi- 
nations could direct it into European channels ? And 
the great fisheries of New Foundland and the naviga- 
tion of the Mississippi, objects of such prominence in 
the labored negotiations of Mr. Jay and Mr. Gallatin, 
and in the earlier treaties of the country: what would 
become of them? These great arms of strength and 
national support were purchased by concessions for 
the good of the whole country. Would either State 
give them up ? Could diplomacy award them to either, 
or divide them ? Certainly not. It might as well at- 
tempt to divide the sun beams, the rains, or the cool- 
ing dews of Heaven. 

In whatever way this great subject can be viewed, 
it presents a bright picture of felicity and strength on 



(he one side, and of gloom and decay on the other. 
In case of disunion, those entangling alliances against 
which Washington warned us would be eagerly sought 
after by the opposing Republics. Each would seek to 
strengthen its arm against its rival by purchasing the 
favor of European States. Those purchases would be 
made by concessions in commerce ; and the strongest 
discriminations in trade against the sister Republic, 
would purchase the strongest friendship abroad. And 
Great Britain would then have it in her power to re- 
press the industry and close the work-shops of New 
England; to deaden her navigation and break up her 
prosperity. Corn she could get, to be sure, from the 
granaries of New York and the countries that border 
on the Upper Lakes. But how could she pay for it ? 
If the Southern Republic would be vulnerable through 
the vast masses of her property that is now producing 
contention, she would hold a weapon of corresponding 
power in her great production of Staples and her posi- 
tive control over the disposition of them. We know 
that Cotton alone, after supplying the home market, 
and the industry of New England, constitutes about 
two thirds, in value, of all- the exports of the United 
States ; that upon this great staple the wealth and 
revenues of the country almost entirely turn. We 
know, indeed, that in various forms, it engages a great 
portion of the capital and one half of the physical in- 
dustry of Great Britain. We know that the surplus 
bread stuffs of the Continent are bought by Great 
Britain, for consumption and commerce, by Cotton, in 
the first stages of manufacture — the raw material be- 
ing of American production. Few are ignorant that the 
surplus Cotton crop, amounting to over a hundred mil- 
lions of dollars, more than pay for all the imports of 



8 

ihe United States, whether from this side or beyond 
the (ape of Good Hope. 

In short, it is upon Cotton mainly, more than upon 
many other of the leading articles of human consump- 
tion combined, that the wealth and commerce of the 
world turns; and \}m\ for all its vast manufactures this 
Bide the Cape of Good Hope, the raw material, with 
but little exception, is supplied by the plantations of 
the United Stairs. And these plantations would all 
fall in the Southern Republic. Not an ounce could 
be grown north of the Potomac. And what an engine 
"i good or of evil this would leave in the grasp of the 
South ! What an engine for retaliation upon the north 
for any encroachments upon that peculiar property that 
is now raising these disturbances! And, in proportion 
to the vastness of these means of mutual annoyance, is 
the power and magnitude of the argument against dis- 
union. 

But, sir, vivid as these pictures are, and true as I 
consider the positions of this letter, there is one other 
and more touching view in which it becomes you and 
me, and the other inhabitants of the shores of the Chesa- 
p' .ike, to look at this great subject. Much as we love 
the Union, our best affections belong to our own State. 
And what is to become of Maryland, in this breaking 
up of the country ? She will be a border State, 
whether the line of separation fall upon the Potomac, 
the Chesapeake, or the southern line of Pennsylvania. 
To her may be addressed the lessons of border war- 
tare. It will be her lot to furnish battle fields and 
burial grounds for contending armies, and to suffer 
most (Void the afflictions of war. And is this to be the 
lot of our beloved state? of Maryland, who has so 
recently and so proudly risen from all her difficulties ? 



9 

No, no ; rather let her move on in the great sisterhood of 
States — preserving her robes in their purity and beau- 
ty — clinging to the birth-right and inheritance that she 
received under the last testament of the great Parent 
of the Country, blessing his memory, repeating his 
lessons, and chaining herself faster and faster to the 
Union. These subjects would soon lead me into a 
course of very wide reflection •, but the letter is al- 
ready quite long enough, and I conclude, by begging 
you to believe me, as always, 

Your friend, 

J. J. SPEED. 



146 






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